I'm the Director of Sportsimpacts and an Economics Professor at the George Herbert Walker School of Business at Webster University in St Louis, MO.
I've conducted research at Super Bowls, Final Fours, All-Star Games, Ryder Cups, and numerous Division I NCAA Championship events.
www.sportsimpacts.net
www.webster.edu/business/depts/

The NFL's 'N-Word' Debate: Economic And Marketing Considerations

I’ve heard a lot of intelligent discussion over the last 48 hours from nationally known white and black sports talk pundits (e.g. Mike Wilbon, Dan LeBatard) regarding whether the National Football League (NFL) should try to discourage the use of the N-word through penalizing players that use the word.

And the arguments on both sides of the fence are certainly understandable.

On the one side, you have folks who want to minimize the use of the word because – in one context – the word has ugly historical context and is thoroughly demeaning.

- From the same study, 97% of the owners are white (31 of 32), and one owner is classified as Asian. There are no black owners of NFL teams;

- From the same study at the league office level, the white/black percentages of office management is 72.4% to 9.2%, and the white/black percentages of support staff personnel is 77.8% to 9.2%.

- Though a bit dated, Scarborough Sports Marketing Research – using data compiled from the 2009-10 NFL season on fan demographics – found that 83% of the people surveyed that considered themselves “NFL fans” were white and only 11.7% were black.

Economic and Marketing Considerations

With the facts above in mind, let’s think about why the NFL is proposing an unsportsmanlike misconduct penalty for using this word.

Are white owners doing this in an effort to inflict pain or harm onto their black players? Are they doing it as some kind of grand display of power over their black employees? I don’t think so.

What are more plausible explanations?

- Improve “workplace decorum”.

I can’t think of too many workplaces in America where ethnic slurs of any type aren’t heavily frowned upon.

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